Singer Natalie Williams is one of few modern jazz/soul singers to be nominated for a MOBO. Hannah Crown caught up with her during the London Jazz Festival, when she sang at the Artsdepot in North Finchley recently

PICTURE a dark courtroom, flanked with a stony-faced trio of magistrates, monotonically ordaining that the only way you can clear your name is if you burst into song.

An episode from an anxiety dream, surely, alongside being forced to take an A-level chemistry class or perform a yoga position in the nude on Antony Gormley’s fourth plinth.

But the bizarre scenario was a waking reality for jazz/soul/pop songstress and MOBO award nominee Natalie Williams last year. Ever keen to note down a promising new tune, she was trilling enthusiastically into her ipod last year in Crouch End when she was pulled over.

She said: “I was driving along, singing into my ipod, and I got hauled up by police. They said I was talking into it. I had to go to magistrates court and explain that if I hear a phrase I think works for a song I record it on my ipod. But they weren’t very interested in my singing and I had to pay £140.”

The 32 year-old singer/songwriter has been well served by humming ditties in her car. A decade after moving to the UK aged 19, from Germany, to go to the Guildhall School of Music, the half-Hungarian daughter of poet John Hartley Williams is on her fourth album, My Oh My, which was launched on September 6.

She is also resident singer at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, having persuaded the world famous venue to open on Sundays for the first time to host her Soul Family night. What was once a £5 jam in an Islington basement has flourished as a mainstay of the jazz calendar and has featured global names like Amy Winehouse and Jamie Cullum, backed by Williams’ ten piece band and three backing singers.

She said: “It started about seven years ago when I decided as a songwriter I really wanted to get my own stuff out there. Things kept going wrong – there was a fire and then a flood and we had to abandon gigs halfway through – but the audience response was really good and it grew.”

Williams says the ‘family’ element also comes out of a desire to nurture unsigned artists. She said: “I get upset by the fact that so many amazing people haven’t been heard. The public is just bombarded with the X Factor where artists don’t have time to work on their craft. It’s like a machine, a good music graduate doesn’t stand a chance, but they like the story of the bin man turned singer or the struggling single mum.

“The backing singers I sing with are some of the best singers I’ve ever met, Vula, who had a hit with Basement Jaxx (Oh My Gosh), Charlene Hector and Brendan Riley. But none of them are signed. Some people just don’t conform to what the industry is looking for. The thing about being independent is they generally let you do what you want.”

This year also marks her first major crossover into mainstream consciousness, when she was nominated with Corinne Bailey Rae and Sade for the 2010 MOBO award for best UK R&B/soul act – losing to Plan B. After launching the London Jazz Festival last year with Kurt Elling, she’s doing two gigs plus a vocal workshop in this year’s festival.

The sweet tones and guttural playfulness of her voice place her in the murky midst of soul, pop and jazz.

Asked how she would categorise herself, she said: “I can sing soul with a jazzy influence and when I sing jazz I sing it soulfully. I like improvising, though sometimes scat singing is more fun to do than to listen to. Aretha Franklin sings jazz exactly how I want it to be sung, soulfully, but it really swings.”